John Q Developer's Blog

2026 Goals / Plans

2026 Goals

  1. Be Happy
  2. Stay on target for a 2040 / Age 55 retirement date (~$60k/year in passive income in 2025 USD)
  3. Monitor exit strategy for retirement
  4. Write that LitRPG novel / serial I never finish
  5. Build an incremetal PBBG (another project I never seem to finish)
  6. Share my personal code / infrastructure / etc with the world in the hopes my experience and choices are useful to someone.
  7. Improve my health. A bit of weight loss and less insomnia/naps. I'm experimenting with my legal drugs again for psychosis so this will be "fun" if things go sideways like they did the last couple of times. But I can't keep gaining weight.
  8. Rebuild the personal infrastructure for projects. I kinda tossed my last setup due to cost / desire and replaced it with a lowendtalk black friday special dedi. I want to be running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS by EOY.
  9. Go on a 4 day vacation in the spring/early summer then another vacation in the fall.

What was in the 5 year plan for 2026

  1. Personal infrastructure maintenance schedule is easy to maintain
  2. LitRPG and/or National GSRPG does its first public release.
  3. Personal infrastructure is properly documented
  4. Health updates that are hopefully positive for the areas of concern (i.e. Managing weight with meds that cause you to gain weight, needing medication to avoid insomnia related psychosis)
  5. Go on a 4 day vacation plus a 9 day vacation outside of visiting my parents/family.
  6. Life quality check in and annual tasks in DECEMBER/2026

The cost in time

  1. The LitRPG is roughly a 10-14 hour a week commitment (5-7 chapters) that I want to convert into a minimum wage side project. (i.e. $13 USD/hour where I live) That comes with some obvious issues but I don't think I can stay motivated entirely based on "I want to do the thing" as a long term plan. I just get bored of projects and start new ones. This will be my main project for the first half of 2026.
  2. The incremental PBBG is going to be something I dump my extra time into as well as other coding projects. Not sure how much time really simply because 10-14 hours is a big commitment on top of a full time day job. But the goal here is basically the same, $13 USD/hour in terms of income vs. time spent. It is also for the same reasons, I'm just not that dedicated to stuff without money being involved.

Ultimately, this is all a bit ambitious while managing medication changes but I might as well try. I can always give up in a couple months if I need to.

The $13/hr number means the end goal is about $1040/month (20 hours * 13 = 1040). Criminally low compared to my actual job but Rome wasn't built in a day. It'd be nice to have a backup plan besides spending my savings whenever I'm unemployed again given the state of the economy for jobs is in the shitter.